The Water Witch

by Juliet Dark

  “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too painful,” I told her. It wasn’t just Soheila I wanted to spare; I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how the creature I’d once slept with had killed the man Soheila loved.

  “I think you should know,” Soheila said, wrapping her hands around the mug of tea Liz handed to her. “After Angus saw his sister destroyed by the incubus, he spent years studying the lore, but in the end it wasn’t the stories about incubi that helped him. It was one of the old Scottish ballads that gave him what he needed.”

  “A Scottish ballad?” I asked, feeling a strange chill. “Was it ‘Tam Lin’?”

  “How did you know?” Soheila asked, clearly surprised.

  “My parents told me the story when I was little …” I stopped, trying to recall something on the edge of my memory. Some other time when I’d heard the ballad recently, but the thin filament of memory had slipped away.

  I continued, “I thought about the story last night. How Jennet has to hold on to Tam Lin while he becomes a snake, a lion, and a burning brand, and how that was what I’d have to do … Only I didn’t. I let go.” I heard my voice wobble on the last words. Liz patted my arm and Ann took out a tissue from her purse and handed it to me.

  “How could you help but let go when he lashed out at you? That’s what Angus discovered. He believed that if he tracked the incubus down to where he had been created and waited for him on Halloween night, as Jennet does, he could turn him into a human being and then kill him. But when he grabbed hold of him he became the one thing that Angus couldn’t fight—his sister, Katy.”

  “Oh,” I said, “that must have been awful.”

  “It was. He was so shocked that he let her go—and then the incubus became a horrible beast with claws that struck him down. Angus lived through the attack and came back to me, but he was already dying from the poison. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t.” Soheila touched the marks on my face. “But I don’t sense any poison in you.”

  “There was,” I said, blushing as I remembered how Bill had rubbed my skin to release the poison. How had he known how to do that? “But it passed out of my system.”

  “You were lucky,” Soheila said. “Angus died within a month and in great pain. But the fact remains that Duncan Laird attacked you.”

  “And,” Liz added in a despairing wail, “all this time that we thought he was helping you gain power, he’s probably been draining you. You haven’t gotten rid of your wards, have you?”

  “Not completely,” I admitted, feeling the coils lash inside me at the question. “But they’ve been loosened. I think they’re almost gone. And,” I added, remembering the footnote I’d read in Wheelock last night, “I think I’ve found a way to keep the Grove from closing the door.”

  “Good,” Liz said. “We may need it. The Grove and IMP have announced a schedule change. The meeting is today.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Today?” I cried, touching the marks on my face. “But we need more time!” I still had to study the spell in Wheelock and I needed time for the loosened wards inside me to dissolve.

  “Well, we don’t have it,” Liz said briskly, glancing at her watch. “I should be there already. Ann and I will go ahead and let Soheila help you with those scratches. You can’t go looking like that.”

  Liz got to her feet and smoothed her skirt. I noticed now that she was dressed in her best tweed Chanel suit, ready to face her opponents in pearls and vintage couture. “This schedule change is meant to unnerve us. We mustn’t let it.”

  Liz and Ann went on ahead while Soheila stayed behind to help me apply makeup over the marks on my face. She used a touch of Aelvesgold and said a spell that she told me her sisters used to cover wrinkles. “Better than Botox,” she assured me.

  I dressed carefully in my best interview suit. For luck, I pinned on a brooch my father had given me. It was fashioned out of two interlocking hearts—a Scottish design called a luckenbooth brooch. Downstairs, I tossed Wheelock in my leather briefcase. When Soheila gave me a look, I told her about the footnote.

  “If the icon has a door on it, that means only a doorkeeper can read the spell,” she said. “Be careful, though. Those correlative spells can be very dangerous.”

  So everyone kept telling me.

  We walked together to Beckwith Hall, where the meeting was being held. It had stopped raining. The day had turned muggy and hot, the air holding a sultry threat of another downpour.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” I said as we walked. “If Duncan is really the incubus, why don’t I feel more attracted to him? Whenever he tried to kiss me, I pushed him away.”

  “Hm.” Soheila tilted her head and looked at me, then touched her hand to my arm. “Maybe the wards are keeping him away.”

  “They didn’t the first time,” I argued, “with Liam.”

  Soheila shrugged and hugged her arms around herself. “Maybe you are becoming stronger. A strong human can resist the pull of an incubus.”

  I told her then about the dreams.

  “Oh,” she said, “but still, you resisted him in the flesh and …” She slanted her eyes toward me and the corner of her mouth tugged into a half smile. “You slept with someone else, didn’t you? That fellow Bill?”

  I blushed, but there was no point lying to Soheila. “Yes. It sort of just happened. He was there after I was attacked and was so sweet.”

  “It’s good you’ve moved on to someone else. It means you’re breaking the hold the incubus had on you. It’s better this way. There’s no future in a relationship between a human and one of his kind.”

  I had a feeling we weren’t talking about me anymore. “Frank would miss you if you went, Soheila. We all would, but Frank most of all.”

  Soheila nodded, her face a mask of pain. “I’d miss him, too,” she admitted. “But it’s because of him I must go. If I were trapped here without access to Aelvesgold eventually I would be driven to feed on humans. If I ever hurt him …” She shivered despite the warmth of the day. “I’d never forgive myself.”

  She forced a grim smile and squeezed my arm. As she turned to continue walking, I wondered if that’s how Duncan had felt after he struck me—and if that’s why he ran away.

  We found a small gathering outside the lecture hall. The only sign indicating the event read SYMPOSIUM ON THE DIALOGUE OF DISCOURSE DETERMINED BY THE DEBATABLE DEXTERITY OF DYNAMIC DISSENT. No doubt it was boring and intimidating (not to mention alliterative) enough to drive away any laypeople. Caspar Van der Aart from earth sciences was talking to Joan Ryan from chemistry, and also some people from town—Dory Browne and two of her cousins and the guy who ran the Greek restaurant, whom I always suspected might be a satyr. I noticed a number of the witches from the circle—Moondance and Leon Botwin and Tara Cohen-Miller—talking among themselves. When they saw us they stopped talking abruptly, as if they’d been talking about us. Moondance, wearing a T-shirt that read I BELIEVE IN FAIRIES, approached us.

  “We heard the meeting had been moved up and wanted to show our support, but they’re not letting us in. They say it’s private. I say if this meeting is going to determine the fate of our friends and neighbors, we should be allowed to attend.”

  “I agree completely,” I said, glad for once to be on the right side of her belligerence. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  One of Adelaide’s blond minions was stationed just inside the door to the lecture hall. Soheila strode toward him, but the second her toe crossed the threshold she shrieked and fell to the floor. I knelt quickly beside her to see what was wrong … and recoiled in shock. Her arm was spidered with a pattern like tree branches. As I watched they broke through her skin and wrapped themselves around her slender forearm and wrist, growing thicker and rougher. Bark formed over their surface and leaves sprouted. A tree branch was growing out of Soheila’s arm. I reached forward and touched it gingerly. Soheila winced.

  “My God, that’s horrible. How can we get rid of it?” I looked up at the
impassive face of the fair-haired man.

  “The branch will recede in a few minutes as long as she doesn’t commit any more infractions,” he said.

  “She only tried to walk through a door—a door on our campus! She works here, for heaven’s sake! This is outrageous!”

  “We sent an email out this morning specifying that no demons would be allowed in the meeting, unless specifically summoned. We can’t have them influencing the proceedings.”

  “And yet the proceedings will decide our fate,” a gruff voice called out from the circle of onlookers. Recognizing it, I got up from Soheila’s side and eagerly peered through the crowd as it parted to let one large, flannel-shirted man through.

  “Brock!” I cried, so glad to see him up and looking well that I threw my arms around him. A red welt appeared on his face, always a sign he was embarrassed. I unwound my arms from him and stepped back. Brock gave me a wistful smile, but when he raised his head to look at the fair-haired guard, an ugly red stain spread across his face and his brows knitted together. “My family has lived in Fairwick for more than a hundred years. You can’t force us to leave.”

  “No one is being forced to do anything.”

  The soft but precise voice came from behind the blond man. I saw the smooth silver chignon first and then smelled Chanel No. 5, a scent that always sent a chill down my spine.

  “Adelaide,” I said, greeting my grandmother by her first name, mostly because I knew it would annoy her. “Why can’t Brock and Soheila attend the meeting? Brock’s family has watched over the woods and protected Fairwick for more than a century. Soheila teaches here. It’s hardly fair to exclude them from a meeting deciding their fate.”

  “We’ve provided a video simulcast,” Adelaide said, pointing to two flat-screen TVs mounted on the lobby walls. “You are all welcome to stay out here and listen. But we can’t have any demons who are capable of magically influencing the proceedings inside. It’s a simple precaution.”

  “Brock’s not a demon!” I said. “He’s a Norse divinity! And Dory!” I cried, pointing at my friend, who was wearing a floral skirt, a yellow sweater set, yellow espadrilles, and carrying a quilted handbag. “She’s a brownie. What could be more harmless than a brownie?”

  Adelaide gave Dory a withering look. “Brownies are one step away from boggarts. Do you know why brownies don’t like to be thanked?”

  This was something I’d always wondered about. Dory and her cousin brownies were always doing good deeds, but they did hate being thanked for them. “I assume it’s because they’re modest,” I answered.

  Adelaide laughed. “Shall I tell her?” she asked Dory, whose pink cheeks had gone pale.

  “No, let me,” Dory said, turning to me. “Many, many years ago a brownie did a favor for a human being, but the human didn’t thank him. The brownie got so angry that he … well, he killed him.”

  “And ate him,” Adelaide added.

  “Yes, ate him. The brownies were in danger of being thrown out of this world. In atonement we agreed to do favors and services without benefit of thanks. Every time we’re thanked, we lose a step toward that atonement.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to imagine one of the brownies eating someone. “Well, at least they’re trying to make up for their wrongdoings …” I gave Dory a reassuring look. Brock put his arm around her.

  “We’ll agree to remain peacefully outside if you’ll allow Callie to speak for us,” Brock said.

  He turned to me, his face full of hope and trust. “You’re our only chance, Callie.”

  I looked past Brock and Dory and saw Ike Olsen. He was standing next to the Norns. Skald held up her phone for me to see. The screen was full of the enigmatic lines I’d seen there before when she had consulted my future. They looked more chaotic than ever, but the knot at the center had loosened and was opening like a fern unfurling. Perhaps the lines represented my wards loosening. I felt them letting go with the trust my friends had in me. I felt a few more links dissolve as I turned back to Brock and Dory and told them, “Yes, I will speak for Fairwick.”

  Beckwith Hall was one of the oldest and most elegant classrooms on the campus. A large, handsome rectangular oak table, which had once been in the refectory of a monastery, sat in the middle of the room. One side of the room was taken up by arched windows alternating with niches that held busts of great philosophers and writers. Today the blinds were drawn over the windows and the busts of Homer, Plato, Sappho, Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë were invisible in their shadowy niches. A projector shot images onto a screen behind the table and onto the covered windows: images of a sunlit grove surrounded by tall trees accompanied by a soundtrack of rustling leaves, birdsong, and the flutter of wings so close that I had to resist the urge to duck as I crossed the room to sit beside Liz.

  She was on the near side of the long table, next to a woman with very short silver hair that stood up in bristly tufts, whom Liz introduced as Loomis Pagan. The pixy gender studies professor from Wesleyan, I recalled. I was introduced in turn to Delbert Winters from Harvard, Eleanor Belknap from Vassar, Lydia Markham from Mount Holyrood, and Talbot Greeley from Bard, who didn’t look like a cluricaune, whatever that was. All the IMP board members sat on one side of the table. The other side was empty.

  “They wouldn’t let Soheila in,” I whispered to Liz after I’d been introduced to everyone and had taken my seat. “Or Dory or Brock.”

  “I know,” Liz said, clucking her tongue. “They’ve made us weaker by excluding the fey. They even tried to ban Talbot and Loomis, but we objected and got them admitted.”

  “Exclusion is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Loomis Pagan began, but then the entrance of the Grove members silenced her.

  Six figures filed into the room. For a moment they appeared to be wearing hooded robes and beaked masks, but then that illusion faded and I saw they were all wearing somber dark suits. They filed behind the table and each stood for a moment behind a chair. The slide show resolved into a single image of the tree-encircled glade and the light brightened as if the sun had come to stand directly above the open clearing. I looked down at my hands and saw that they were dappled with leaf shadow … and something else. A shadow of wings passed overhead just as the sound of wings on the soundtrack grew louder. I looked around, half-expecting some giant bird to come swooping down from the ceiling, but there was nothing but a stirring that seemed to be coming from the shadowy niches—as if the luminaries enclosed in them were trying to get a better view of the proceedings.

  Adelaide’s two blond companions stood at either ends of the table. I was surprised that they were actually on the board. I’d thought the Grove was an all women’s club and that the men were security guards, but perhaps they were representatives from the London Seraphim Club. My grandmother stood at the center, between an older woman and a young woman with bangs and horn-rimmed glasses. Except for the blond twins, the council was made up of women in sensible, boxy suits and low-heeled pumps. It could have been the board of the local PTA or garden club instead of the governing body of an ancient order of witches.

  A bell rang and the six Grove members pulled out their chairs and sat. The audio loop grew quieter and the light grew brighter over the long table. My grandmother clasped her hands, leaned forward, and addressed our side of the table as if we were a large crowd a long way off.

  “As Chancellor of the Oak, I call this meeting between the Grove and the Institute of Magical Professionals to order.” I thought I saw the two blond minions sneer a bit at the word professionals. Adelaide turned to the older woman on her right. “Miss Davis, do you have the report on Fairwick?”

  “That’s Garnette Davis,” Liz whispered. “She’s descended from a witch who was executed at Salem.”

  Garnette Davis opened her briefcase and took out a bound report that was at least four inches thick. As she handed it to Adelaide the pages rustled. Adelaide put her hand on the cover as if to calm the pages within, then opened to the first page
and read aloud, her clear aristocratic voice silencing even the recorded noises in the room.

  “In the autumn of 2009, a committee was formed to investigate irregularities at the institution of Fairwick College, the village of Fairwick, and the outlying woods and farmlands. Because the last door to Faerie existed in the woods of Fairwick the area has long been a haven for supernatural creatures—fey, demon, and undesignated.”

  “Could you please clarify what you mean by the term ‘undesignated’?” Loomis Pagan asked archly.

  Adelaide gave Loomis a withering look, picked up a separate sheet, and began reading aloud in a bored monotonic voice. “Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, half breeds …”

  Half breeds? I wondered. Wasn’t I a sort of half breed? I focused back on Adelaide, who was still listing creatures who came under the undesignated label. “… trows, poltergeists, revenants, zombies …”

  “I think we get the idea,” Delbert Winters interrupted, glaring at Loomis Pagan. “Can we get on with this? I’m catching a plane to Iceland tonight.”

  “I’d be happy to get on with it,” Adelaide replied, picking up the report and reading where she had left off. “For many years it had been thought the door was inactive, but when it came to our attention that the door was not only active, but that creatures were passing freely between worlds without any supervision, the Grove decided to investigate the nature of the college and community. We found that at least three hundred fifty-three undocumented aliens were living in the town, among them races known to feed on humans, such as incubi, lidercs, and succubi, and that numerous attacks had been made on humans.”

  Liz cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Madame Chancellor. May I ask where you are getting your information?”

  “Certainly. Because we wanted to be sure that there could be no accusation of bias, we subcontracted a report from an independent third party—the Internal Affairs Division of the Institute of Magical Professionals.”